Did you indadvertantly leave the carton of eggs on the counter over night? Toss them.

Raw eggs kept refrigerated will remain fresh for 4-5 weeks.

A hard boiled egg may safely be refrigerated for up to one week.

When we were kids, we would color the eggs, place them all in a big basket and they sat out as decoration for......who knows maybe a week!! Then on Easter Sunday we'd have an egg hunt, find the eggs and then they'd sit in our baskets, until someone got hungry.

As I said, "It's a wonder I'm still alive."

Unlike eggs, egg cups do NOT need to be refrigerated!

I don't really collect egg cups, but generally a collection

is defined as three or more of any related object.

So I guess I have a collection of egg cups.

Which came first the chicken or her eggs?In this case I first collected the vintage Fiesta salt and peppers.The hen came later in the game.

The basic shapes of egg cups can be generalized as single, double, bucket and figural.

If you collect egg cups, you are a “pocillovist” (pronounced PO-SIL-O-VIST).

Pocillovy is the name given to the hobby, which comes from the Latin,

pocillum ovi, meaning a small cup for an egg.

No eggs or humans or chickens were harmed in shooting theseimages. All eggs, both raw and hard boiled were returned tothe refrigerator within the two hour recommended time frame.

With Easter coming up fast on the holiday calendar, I gathered all my

egg cups together for a group shot. You can see that they vary widely in

shape and size. The use of egg cups is still pretty common in Europe,

but less and less so here in the states. In the early decades of the 20th

century there was a great interest in egg cups, sets of egg cups and the

implements like special "beheading" scissors and oddly shaped spoons

designed just for eating soft boiled eggs placed in egg cups.

The larger "bucket" shaped egg cups are vintage Fiesta in the original six colors.

The foot is not usual for the bucket shape, but the size of the bowl is fairly standard.

This shape isn't really suited to a single egg and it is thought that it was meant

for toast "soldiers' (a piece of toast cut into strips lengthwise) and an egg

to be eaten with a fork or spoon.

The tiny vintage Harlequin individual egg cups are more delicate than

many vintage egg cups and of course they come in wonderful bright colors.

The egg cups in this contemporary caddy are fairly typical of a standard

egg cup used on a daily basis since the beginning of their popularity.

There were porcelain egg cups made by many of the major china

manufacturers and they were added to china services by many Victorian households.

This little egg holder is purely decorative and was mine as a child.

We had a whole set of them, but sadly this is the only one which has survived.

The Hankscraft "Fiesta" Egg Cooker in vintage Red is shown with 3 of its

matching egg cups. These are "double" egg cups with one end being larger

for larger eggs, like duck or turkey eggs you might have had access to if you

lived on a farm or raised poultry. You can read more about my Hankscraft

37 comments:

Candy, what an informative post! Thank you sweet lady! My favorite one is the decorative one that was yours as a child, how special is that?? Thanks for sharing all of your great egg information! Happy Easter to you too!

I enjoyed reading your post. I love all of your egg cups. I don't have any but would love some of those Fiesta Ware cups in all the bright colors. I remember eating hard boiled eggs that had been sitting in my Easter basket for days if not a week or more...unrefrigerated! Ha! It is amazing that our whole generation survived!!

Adorable post and enjoyed the humor! I echo Daphne when I say that I am egg-ceptionally glad that you are still alive after eating all those Easter eggs! Love the music on your blog and you have an egg-ceptional collection of egg cups - well, actually, china as a whole! Egg-xactly what we need to know about eggs and egg cups with Easter coming.

Ditto what Daphne said! I love seeing things that belonged to people as a child. Isn't it funny how something can bring up so many fond memories? My favorite things I have are things I've inherited...some are very nice and some are probably only very nice to me...because I know they belonged to someone I loved. This was a great post.

p/s I love those brown hobnail glasses in your 2nd header pic! I may have said that before!

Candy, This was a wonderful post. Full of fun facts and useful advice. I got a chuckle out of your disclaimer! You are so clever. And you have a big collecion of egg cups. I always want to know what the big egg cups were for. I wonder if a duck or turkey egg tastes very different?This was a great post.Yvonne

Love your egg cups! Egg safety is a touchy thing with me. A few years ago, I became terribly ill after eating a farm egg. It wasn't cracked. Best I can figure, Dr. Big picked up an old egg on the hen house floor and somehow it found its way to me. Boy, was I sick!Have a great weekend!

I'm so happy to hear that I wasn't the only one eating two week old unrefrigerated eggs!! And that most of us must have survived.

And to those like Michael Lee who have suffered the consequences of food poisoning, I do hope that this was taken as an educational post for those who might still be treating eggs the way it was done back in the day! Bad eggs are dangerous!!

I'm so happy you all enjoyed my egg cups and I'm especially pleased that ALL three of our hostesses stopped by to say hello! I do appreciate it.

I'm scraping the bottom of the Easter barrel, but hope to have one more Easter post in me for next week's Show and Tell. I've had next week's Foodie Friday post ready for weeks with a couple of recipes.....and yes, the food has all been properly handled and refrigerated since I set up the table more than 2 hours ago!

Wow, I love all your egg cups! I grew up eating soft boiled eggs and "soldiers". There was a popular character in England called Noddy and I had a Noddy eggcup. My youngest son inherited my love of eggs and soldiers so I got him a rooster egg cup:) Thank you for sharing all your egg cups!

Really enjoyed your post - loved your Fiesta 'collection'!! Growing up we had soft boiled eggs all the time with 'soldiers'...no fancy egg cups, with all us kids (10) Mom would have had a BIG collection!!

Loved seeing your collection of egg cups! I learned a great deal from this post. Thank you for sharing so much fascinating information. Your posts are always clever and very well-written.

Add my name to the list of those who ate those colorful hard-boiled Easter eggs that had been out of the refrigerator for FAR longer than two hours! I didn't eat that many of them. I found the candy version far more appealing. Who cared that they were devoid of nutritional value??

How sweet are those egg cups? I wish I had such neat things! And those glittery eggs - you've inspired me, I'm going to make glitter eggs this week for Easter! (I'm sure the inside of my fridge will be soooo happy to be covered in glitter!)

I'm so glad to see more survivors of old hard boiled eggs that have survived! Thanks so much for stopping by to see all my egg cups!

Oh Kathleen ...... you just brought back really bad memories of tuna sandwiches. Ewwwww .... back in the early 60's driving from Chicago to Dallas in the winter with the heater blasting to keep from freezing in an MG. Tuna sandwiches consumed around St. Louis and DEATHLY ill and in an ER by Ohklahoma City. Took me a long long time to eat tuna again! LOL

Candy, it is amazing that all of us survived our youths with all the guide lines that have come to light. LOLFun to see your collection of egg cups. I have a small collection of French egg cups. ~ Sarah

Hi Candy! You and me both! I ate eggs that had been out way too long too as a child. Maybe even as an adult too! :)Love your eggs cups. As I was reading your post I thought I'd ask you a question. But before I finished reading, you had answered it for me! :)I have a set of egg cups that are just huge and I thought the little egg would just get lost in there. Never thought about anything other than chicken eggs! You're so very smart! :)Thanks for popping in to see me.be a sweetie,Shelia ;)

Ohhh what fun! I loved seeing all of your pretty colors of egg cups! And yes...I would say that you have a collection of them...hehe! Thank you for sharing all the info about egg cups...I certainly learned a thing or two from this! Your little egg holder that you had as a child is just precious. I have never seen any like it before...it's sooo cute and quite unique! Love your big wire rooster or was it a hen? I was trying to figure out what all of the pretty colored objects were...inside! What a great idea...to display your little S&P's...beautiful! Thank you so much for sharing this great post with us for the Sunday Favorites repost party, Candy!

I think I say it every single time, but I am so in awe of your collection of Fiesta Ware. I love that you have grouped all your table settings together, because I go in and get wonderful ideas for clever color combos. I'm so glad you have this great talent for setting all these colorful and fun tables.CAS